The women of Mariachi Sirenas, Chicago’s first all-female mariachi group, insist it was a complete coincidence their first practice fell on International Women’s Day.

Eréndira Izguerra knows it was pure coincidence. She was one of the original members who called the practice. And as she said, “I had no idea (International Women’s Day) was a thing.”

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Now Mariachi Sirenas practice on Sunday afternoons in a first-floor Pilsen apartment. The weather on this particular Sunday is bright enough to heat dry a dress hanging on the open screen door and breezy enough for the incoming air to work as acceptable AC. The seven sirenas sit in a circle, instruments perched on their laps.

Six of the seven current members are first generation Mexican American. Five are first generation musicians. Three, Ibet Herrera, Jeanette E. Nevarez, and Laura Velázquez, are cousins. The rest are “adopted ones.”

Mariachi Sirenas began when the three cousins crossed paths with Izguerra at another mariachi performance in 2016. While all-female mariachi groups were common across the country, there wasn’t a Chicago-based one. In the span of six months, Izguerra and the three cousins rallied eight other female mariachis to join their new group. On March 8, 2017, International Women’s Day, they held their first practice.

A friend of Izguerra’s recommended the women call themselves Mariachi Sirenas de Jalisco. And while the group toyed around with a few other names, they eventually circled back to Sirenas. Sirenas, like the English word siren, refers to both the loud ringing sound that signals emergency vehicles and the underwater sirens that lure voyagers with their song. “It’s a very feminine name for a very masculine genre,” Herrera said.

After cutting the de Jalisco (“We’re not from Jalisco,” Izguerra said.), Mariachi Sirenas debuted at the Pilsen Taco Festival that June. At this first performance, a group of men off the side of the stage began berating the women. Izguerra remembers them shouting, “You shouldn’t be up there! Just take off your shirts! What are you doing playing this music!”

Following their debut, misogyny and machismo continues to meet the women wherever they turn. While entering venues the women are catcalled, told to shorten and tighten their performance suits. While speaking with men looking to book the group, they are asked, “Why do you charge that much you’re just women?” and “is someone like Vincente Fernandez accompanying you?”

“They don’t know what we have to offer,” Herrera said. “It doesn’t matter if we are wearing skirts or pants; we are doing just what everybody else is doing out there.”

Recently, while Mariachi Sirenas performed at a private event, a man reached out to touch Izguerra. “The man had the audacity to grab me by the arm and kind of pull me like he was going to take me to a room,” she said, looking around the Pilsen apartment at the other sirenas. “I don’t know if you guys noticed that?”

These joking touches and “las miradas que te dan,” the looks they give you, Izguerra said, are unfortunate. “Pero son cosas que tienes que aguentar.” Yet these are things you have to endure. “You’re there to play music and just keep going,” she said.

Local mariachis occasionally refer to Mariachi Sirenas as las sirenitas, or the little mermaids. And, in addition to being scrutinized for their femininity, las sirenas are questioned for their Mexican-American identity. “I always say that we are not American enough for the Americans and not Mexican enough for the Mexicans de México,” Izguerra said.

“Should we try to be more ‘Mexican’ for the traditional Mexicans or should we stay true to who we are?” Herrera said. “We have that Mexican heritage but we were born in this land.”

All of the women hold the mariachi genre in high regard and make an effort to keep their performance within the tradition. Yet keeping in the tradition does not mean relegating themselves to people’s wrongful assumptions about mariachi.

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“When you (say) mariachi, in their minds they just go to these fat men with really big mustaches and guitars,” Herrera said.

“Or they think of ‘The Mexican Hat Dance’ … or ‘La Cucaracha,’” Izguerra added. “(But) there is more beauty in this tradition than what has been stereotyped.”

Regardless of the scrutiny, Mariachi Sirenas have performed at venues ranging from private parties and clubs to festivals, schools, and baby birthday parties.